Last night I finally had the pleasure of reading C.S. Forester’s “The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck” which details the efforts by the British Navy in mid-1941 to locate and destroy Nazi Germany’s most powerful battleship, a ship that literally had the power to break Britain’s naval superiority and give Germany the edge needed to win the war.

I’d been trying (half-heartedly) to track down a copy of the book for some time. It’s been out of print for years, so no bookstores in the area, or Amazon, had copies. I enjoyed Forester’s Hornblower books, and imagined I’d enjoy the book. I finally located it on eBay and it arrived a few days ago.

The story of the Bismarck — the actual story, the one the book is based on — well, it’s an incredible story of luck and crazy odds in a storm tossed ocean. The British Navy was spread across the Atlantic, blockading German warships in port, safeguarding convoys from u-boats, and then what few ships were left struggling to locate the Bismarck after the ship was spotted off the Swedish coast, with her escort Prinz Eugen. The British Cruiser Suffolk then located Bismark in the Denmark Straights and shadowed the massive ship, radioing their position to the British Admirality, which dispatched HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Whales to confront, engage, and sink the Bismark.

Prince of Whales was a brand new battleship and right out of the shipyard — an untrained crew, and not entirely reliable equipment. In fact, workers from the dock yard were still aboard making sure everything worked right. On the other hand, battlecruiser Hood had been built during the first world war — in the intervening years, she’d been Britain’s “goodwill ambassador” to almost every nation on the planet. When people spoke of the Hood, they spoke of Britain’s naval strength.

Early dawn, Hood and Prince of Whales closed and began to fire on the Bismark and Prinz Eugen. Bismarck returned fire. Within minutes, the Hood was scattered in thousands of millions of pieces across the North Atlantic, and the Prince of Whales was heavily damaged and retreating under cover of smoke.

The death of the Hood was a heavy blow to Britain, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed the Admirality, “The whole world is watching. Sink the Bismarck.”

I don’t want to give too much of the events away, but following the destruction of the Hood, battleships, aircraft carriers, and a squadron of destroyers based in Gibraltar sailed to fight the Bismarck. One could argue that it was the hunt for the Bismarck which proved the battleship-class obsolete for modern naval warfare, where power is projected not through multiple, high-chambered cannons mounted aboard a ship, but rather through the ability to strike from the air — indeed, it was British fighters flying from Victorious and Ark Royal which delivered the death blows to Bismarck. Not in the literal sense, no plane sunk that ship, but their torpedo attacks ruptured a fuel tank and left a trail of oil (in the case of Victorious’ attack) and damaged her rudder and propeller (in the case of Ark Royal‘s).

(PS – I’m going through most of this on memory, I’ve got some facts wrong, I’m sure).

The History Channel did an awesome documentary several years back, which is how I was introduced to the tale. Forrester’s telling of the story is exciting and decent, but lacks character involvement, which I found dissapointing. Anyway, it’s probably one of the most exciting tales of World War II — if you’re into that kind of thing — and well worth looking into.

“Sink the Bismarck!”

(No, I haven’t seen the movie. Yes, it’s on my queue on Netflix).